“And don’t forget Rachel!” Gilah said. “Even Adi took years.” She clamped her mouth shut at the mention of Boaz’s first wife. “But you will not have any of the trouble she had.” Her face flushed with the words.
“It’s all right. I know women die in childbirth. I know women can be barren.” Ruth looked into the faces of these dear women. “I guess we will just trust our God for the outcome.” Could she trust Him with this? She had once considered offering Adonai Elohim a sacrifice to procure a child with Mahlon, but that was back before she truly believed in Him. Was it proper to ask for a child of her Creator now?
The women nodded. “Yes. Trust,” Gilah said. “And we will all pray and say blessings over you at your wedding. You just wait and see. You will be carrying Boaz’s son in no time.” She stopped abruptly again and glanced at Naomi. “Forgive me. Mahlon’s heir.”
Naomi shook her head. “No need to apologize, my friend. The child will bear Boaz’s name and carry Mahlon’s inheritance. He can be both, can he not?”
The women nodded and laughed, and Ruth breathed deeply in a contented sigh. A child. In ten years with Mahlon she had never experienced even one pregnancy. But now . . . Her cheeks heated. Now she desperately wanted to bear Boaz’s son. Pray God that she could.
41
Boaz wiped the sweat from his brow as he passed almond and apricot trees green with fruit and grapevines blooming nearby on the way to the wheat fields. In the many years of drought, these trees and vines had shriveled until there were no apricots or almonds or grapes for refreshing wine.
He glanced heavenward. Thank You, Adonai. Your grace has blessed our land once again. He couldn’t wait to bring the last of the harvest in and head to Shiloh with his sacrifices and share the moment with Ruth. Though they would not officially be man and wife in the truest sense, they were man and wife in the legal sense, and he would take her and Naomi with him to celebrate the Feast of Weeks. It was one of his favorites.
He looked up to see Ezra walking toward him.
“We are on the last few rows of wheat,” Ezra told him, motioning to what remained of the standing grain. “And just in time, for the fiftieth day from Passover is nearly upon us.”
“You’ve been counting the days, my friend?”
Ezra shrugged. “It is a joyous feast, is it not, my lord? And more so this year, I daresay.”
“I daresay you are probably right.” Boaz laughed, surprising himself at the lightness of his heart. “But yes, it is a harvest of joy this year especially. A reminder after the long drought of new birth, of the seed’s resurrection at last from its death when we planted it.”
“Resurrection.” Ezra said the word with sudden reverence. “Do you think it is only the seeds that die and are reborn to new life?” He held Boaz’s gaze, his brow furrowed as if in deep thought.
Boaz looked out at the wheat field where the female servants still gleaned behind his reapers, though Ruth was no longer among them. Those gleanings that had led him to Ruth had begun from such tiny seeds, but every farmer knew that a seed had to die to sprout into sustaining food for life. Were the bodies of men and women like those seeds?
“I mean, we are born and we die. I have never seen a single person in my family or among my friends come back again.” Ezra leaned closer. “And in my uncle’s case, that’s not a bad thing.” He smacked his leg and laughed.
Boaz smiled. Ezra was good for him. He kept him from becoming too sober and, in the past, too morose. “I think,” he said after a lengthy pause, “that the ancients believed they would see God in their own flesh. How could that happen if our bodies remained only in the grave?”
“So we are celebrating the future of resurrection when we celebrate the Feast of Weeks.” It wasn’t a question, but by his raised brow, Boaz knew Ezra meant it as one to be answered.
“Like the birth and growth and gathering in of the wheat, yes.” Boaz ran a hand over his beard, the thought comforting. “I’m not sure what it means, my friend, but I suspect our God does, and someday our children’s children will understand it better than we do today.”
His children. Despite all his past losses, he somehow knew one day his words would prove true.
“Are you ready to go, my daughter?” Naomi stood at the threshold of the bedchamber, her robe tied and her belt fitted with a water skin and a bag of parched grain, ready for the trip to Shiloh.
“Almost. Is he here yet?” Ruth stood, her palms moist from more than the summer’s heat. Boaz was coming to take them to the festival, and after it ended she would enter his home as his wife.
Wife. She had said the word so many times it slipped unbidden into her thoughts, and yet her nerves were still frayed with anticipation and . . . and what? Would she make him a good wife? Would he be all that she imagined he would be?
“I hear footsteps and the sound of men speaking. I think he is entering the courtyard. Hurry, my daughter.” Naomi left her to welcome the men, while Ruth glanced at her reflection in the bronze mirror Boaz had given her. She was becoming much too vain, worrying what he would think of her appearance.
He seemed to like you well enough in poor rags and with disheveled hair. He would accept her dressed as his sisters suggested, wouldn’t he?
She tucked the pouch with her own water flask and grain into her belt and walked out to meet the men.
“There you are,” Boaz said, his smile warming her. He offered his hand and she slipped hers into it, comforted by his reassuring squeeze. “The Feast of Weeks is like nothing you would have known in Moab. It is a time of joy and thanksgiving, of harvest, and even a time to remember the giving of the law.” He glanced into her eyes, his own bright with an inner glow.
“Are there no sacrifices then?” She met his gaze, hoping he didn’t see the worried look in her eyes.
He searched her face, understanding dawning in his gaze. “Yes, we do sacrifice two lambs as part of the feast, which we later share in a communal meal. Two loaves of bread made with yeast are waved by the priests in offering to the Lord.”
“And that is all? Just an offering of food?” She gave him a puzzled look.
He studied her a moment. “This is a harvest festival, beloved. Thanksgiving to our God for His provision for us, though if we choose, we can give a freewill offering—an animal sacrifice in gratitude to our God.”
“So no child or poor man is offered?” Naomi had assured her, but somehow she needed to hear it from him.
“Never,” he said softly. “To offer a human sacrifice to our God would be an abomination to Him.” He stroked her palm in another reassuring gesture. “You never have to fear the things here that you feared in Moab, Ruth. Our God is the true God, and He is to be feared and obeyed, but not like the gods of the nations around us. He does not ask our obedience to punish us but to preserve us. He always seeks what is best for those He loves.”
Ruth walked with him in silence for several moments, while others from Bethlehem joined the throng and proceeded through the gates. Sheep bleated and donkeys brayed and children ran laughing ahead of their parents. Women chattered and men led carts of grain and other gifts to give at Shiloh to the priests as an offering to Yahweh.
She sidled slightly closer to Boaz, though the action felt rather bold on her part. But legally they were man and wife, and she needed him to hear her above the crowd.
“Does God accept me?” She looked into Boaz’s face as she spoke, standing on tiptoe to reach his ear, blushing with the question.
Boaz stopped, catching her when she nearly tripped at his abruptness. He turned her to face him, while Naomi and the others in their group continued past them. He touched her cheek. “How I wish I could reassure you—our God is the one who commands us to love the sojourner because we were sojourners in Egypt. God does not ask us to do for others what He has not already done for us. His steadfast love has been upon us for generations—and that includes you because you have chosen to live among us, to make our God your God.”
Tears filled her eyes, and he caught the drops with his thumbs. “So even though I’m a Moabite . . .”
He placed a finger over her lips. “It matters not at all, beloved. You belong to Israel now, a branch grafted into the vine of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Our people are your people.”
She laughed amidst tears that would not stop. “As I promised to Naomi not so many months ago.”
“And Adonai has heard you.” He bent low, his face so close she could smell the scent of the spices he had rubbed into his skin.
“I am glad,” she whispered, wishing in that moment, not caring who saw them, that he would kiss her.
As if he could read her very thoughts, he did. The thrill of his touch sent tingles rushing through her, and even when he pulled away, the heady feeling lingered.
Shiloh came into view two days later. Two days of camping with the men and women of Bethlehem and other Israelite cities along the way. The air was jubilant, laughter abundant, and Ruth found herself so caught up in the joy that she wondered for the briefest moment how Mahlon could have preferred Moab’s festivals to this.
As they approached the tabernacle on the last day, Ruth looked on in awe at the tent of which Moses himself had commanded the design and construction. The large bronze altar stood just beyond the screen of the gate to the court, taking in her whole vision.
“It’s so big,” she said to Naomi. Boaz had gone ahead with Ezra and his men to prepare the lambs for sacrifice and to present the bread to the priests.
“Yes. Many lambs have been sacrificed on this altar,” Naomi said, her voice uncharacteristically sober. “At least since the time of Moses, and when our people wandered in the wilderness.” She glanced at Ruth. “Before the tabernacle, our forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob built stone altars. There were no priests or golden and bronze utensils.” She waved her hand in an arc toward the entire tented complex. “None of this existed before we left Egypt.”
Ruth looked out over the grounds. A curtained fence stood sentinel in a large rectangle around a smaller tented enclosure—the tent of meeting where the Ark of the Covenant stood enshrined behind a curtain none of them could see or visit.
Naomi pointed to the very structure. “Only the priests can enter the tabernacle and keep the golden lampstand and incense burning and replace the bread of the presence before the Lord. And only the high priest can enter the Holy of Holies once a year.”
Ruth squinted, trying better to see, but the curtain over the tabernacle was made of dark goat’s hair, impossible to see through. “What is the Holy of Holies?”
“The place where the Ark of the Lord rests inside the tent of meeting. The high priest enters on the Day of Atonement to offer sacrifices for our sins and his own. It is our most sacred holy day.”
Ruth nodded, though understanding still seemed to slip through her grasp. “He does this every year?”
Naomi took Ruth’s hand and led her closer to the fence, away from some of the other women. “Yes, my daughter. For we sin against the Lord in ways we don’t always realize. None of us can keep every commandment every day every year. We break the laws, especially the one that tells us not to covet what another person possesses.”
“If the law is so impossible to keep, then why was it given?” The gods of her people had rules and traditions to keep, but most of them were outward, not so probing as to affect a person’s inner thoughts and desires.
“To show us that our God is perfect and we are not. But our God has made a way for us to find peace with Him through the blood of the sacrificial lambs. It is a great mercy, my child, for He could just decide we are not worth forgiving or saving. For that matter, He could have left us as slaves in Egypt.”
Ruth looked from Naomi to the bronze altar where the priests had begun to offer sacrifices. Closer to the tabernacle, priests held two large loaves of bread and waved them high overhead. The wave offering Boaz had told her about.
“Are the lambs offered for our sins this time?” Ruth looked at Naomi once more.
Naomi shook her head. “This time they are offered as thanksgiving for all God has done for us—to bless our God—and then we share the meat from the lambs with everyone.” She smiled and took Ruth’s hand. “And there will be singing and dancing and—oh, you just have to wait and see!”
Ruth looked around at the entire group, grateful all over again that Naomi’s God—her Adonai—had called her out to join this people. To rejoice in this festival. To understand one more small piece of the mystery of God’s intentions. Of His heart.
42
Three Days Later
Ruth sat once again in Naomi’s sitting room dressed in her finest clothes, her veil wrapping her in secretive quiet. The ten virgins had split into two groups and stood waiting in the courtyard. One group had lit their lamps and stood on either side of the walk leading to the house, while the others waited with torches to touch their wicks the moment Boaz stepped into the light.
Ruth sat surrounded by lamps, the whole house illumined as though this was the place where they would feast, but they were simply waiting. Waiting for the bridegroom to claim his bride.
Her heart fluttered at the thought. She tilted her head, straining to listen, but all she could hear were the sounds of female chatter in the courtyard and the low thrum of voices from the women in the cooking room. Not even Naomi joined her here. She waited alone in her veils and jewels and anticipation, longing to hear his voice, to see a glimpse of him coming up the walk.
“He’s coming!” one of the virgins called toward the house.
Through the open door she could see the five other virgins hurry to touch the flame to their wicks to set their lamps aglow, then set the torches back in the stands at the edge of the courtyard.
Male voices and boisterous laughter drew closer, until at last Boaz stood at the threshold. “I have prepared a place for you,” he said, stepping into the room. He took her hand and pulled her to stand before him. “Come with me, for it is time.”
She smiled, though he could barely see beneath her veil, and clasped his calloused fingers. The women emerged from the cooking room and hurried after them, joining the ten virgins and the men who had accompanied Boaz until they were leading a great crowd through the streets of Bethlehem.
At a bend in the road, Boaz stopped. A young donkey’s colt stood tied to a post, draped in colorful linens. Boaz lifted Ruth with ease and set her on the donkey’s back, then took the reins and led her forward.
Torches danced and spread dappled light over the stone streets, and people stepped into their courtyards to wave and shout well wishes to the happy couple. Ruth watched it all, her eyes taking it in with wonder. The crowd seemed to grow in size behind them, and when Boaz glanced back to look into her face, his smile melted her insides.
Her heart beat faster when at last Boaz’s estate came into sight. She glimpsed servants waiting, and the house was lit with so many torches and lamps that it seemed daytime instead of midnight.
Boaz lifted her from the donkey, and a servant took the animal away while he carried her in his arms to a large tent standing in his courtyard. The scent of his spikenard wafted to her, mingling with the heady feeling of his arms about her. Too soon, he placed her on her feet and took her hand in his. They stood beneath a canopy as a town elder came and stood before them.
“May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you act worthily in Ephrathah and be renowned in Bethlehem, and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman.”
A cheer followed the blessing, and Boaz took Ruth in his arms and twirled her in a circle, then wrapped his cloak about her shoulders.
“You are now truly consecrated to me,” he said, his voice low, hoarse with emotion.
She nodded, too filled with her own emotion to speak. But she could not stop smiling.
The fe
asting lasted long into the night, with singers and entertainers and dancers and food and wine flowing in abundance. Women with children had gone home a short time ago, and men lay sprawled on the court, either filled with too much wine or tired from so much feasting.
Boaz approached Ruth where she sat with Naomi in one of the inner rooms, where she had received guests until the crowd had thinned. He knelt before her, looked deeply into her eyes, then took her hand. “It’s time, beloved.”
Naomi stood to leave, but Boaz stayed her with a look. “Mother Naomi, you will stay in the room I have prepared for you. As I indicated from the beginning, you will live with us now.” He smiled at Naomi’s pleased expression.
“Thank you, my son.” She nodded at them both as a servant appeared and led her down a winding hall.
“Your home is large,” Ruth said, her palm growing moist beneath the warmth of his hand. “Thank you for doing that for her. I am most grateful.”
He pulled her to her feet. “There was never any question.” He led her quietly down a different hall to a large bedchamber, obviously masculine. Had he removed all signs of Adi’s former presence? Or would she sleep apart from him in rooms of her own?
He closed the door and came to stand before her. “This room needs your feminine touch, my love.” He undid the clasp that held her veil and let it fall to her feet, then one by one removed the combs from her dark, flowing hair. A sigh escaped him. “How long I have wanted to see the full length of this.” He sifted several strands through his fingers, then let them fall to her waist as he touched her face. “You are most beautiful.” He smoothed the short hairs that clung to her temples.
“Thank you, my lord.” She felt her breath hitch as he undid the belt at her waist and took the artfully decorated robe from her shoulders. She stood waiting, exhaustion and excitement mingling within her.
Redeeming Grace: Ruth's Story Page 25
